Psalm 90

COMMENTARY IN EXPOSITORY FORM

I. In contrast to the everlasting God, human life is brief because of God’s anger over sin (1–10)

A. Human life is fragile and fleeting in contrast to the eternality of God (1–2)

The psalmist will lament the brevity and suffering of this life and then pray for relief and some time of blessing before it is over. But to lay the foundation for all of this, the writer begins with a short hymn addressed to God that focuses on the everlasting presence and provision of God—a striking contrast with fragile and fleeting human life. The beginning of the hymn is in fact an affirmation of faith: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place (מָעוֹן) throughout all generations.” He addresses God as “Lord,” emphasizing the sovereignty and majesty of God. And he identifies him as their dwelling place. This metaphor for a place of protection (see Deut. 33:27; Ps. 91:9) would have been most meaningful in the earlier setting when the newly formed nation of Israel had no home and no refuge apart from God. But this was no empty platitude, for God had proven himself to be both from generation to generation.

God’s constant presence with his people to protect and provide for them is consistent with his eternality. And so in the second verse the psalmist declares that the LORD is the everlasting God; the implication of this for the affirmation of verse 1 is that God’s loving care for Israel is eternal. To stress the eternal nature of God the psalmist uses creation as a point of reference: before creation God was always the everlasting God. For his reflection on creation he uses birth imagery to stress that the LORD alone is the creator. The first colon uses the passive voice: “Before the mountains were brought forth” (יֻלָּדוּ; compare Prov. 8:25 where the earth is the subject). But the second colon uses the active voice and is more direct: “or you gave birth to (וַתְּחוֹלֵל) the earth and the world.” It is unusual to say that God gave birth to the world, but in poetry it is not impossible to use such language to describe God as the source of all life (see Deut. 32:18). The two objects, “earth” (the general term אֶרֶץ) and “world” (the fruitful, inhabited world, תֵּבֶל), signify that God produced this planet and everything on it. So while the verse stresses the sovereignty of the LORD as creator, in this psalm the underlying point is that the eternal God precedes creation. And so the final affirmation of this little hymnic section keeps our attention on his eternality: “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” The doctrine of God in Scripture asserts that God has no beginning and no end—he is eternally present. Interestingly, although the Greek version incorrectly read the word “God” (אֵל) as the negative (אַל) and joined it to the next verse, it made perfectly good sense to the translator to read the remaining words as “from everlasting to everlasting you are.” There is no other god who can compare. There is no other god.

So while the faithful know all too well that human life is fragile and fleeting, they find comfort in the fact that God is always present. Their comfort is not simply in the fact that God is everlasting, but in the fact that this means he is their perpetual dwelling place.

B. The eternal God brings human life quickly to an end (3–6)

The tone of the psalm changes now to describe the lamentable frailty of humankind—people are but dust. Here is the contrast that clearly reveals God’s sovereign authority: God outlasts the most enduring things in creation (v. 2), but humans return to dust (v. 3). God is the everlasting God, but he brings human life quickly to an end. Verse 3 states, “You turn (תָּשֵׁב; s.v. Ps. 126:1) people (אֱנוֹשׁ) back to dust.” The verb has the jussive form (and has been taken as a jussive by some, a negated jussive in the Greek version to say “do not turn away”). But it is more appropriate in this lament section to interpret it as an indicative, a reference to the punishment of death. When sin entered the world and mankind’s dream of divinity died, God announced that people were dust and would return to dust—they are not like God after all (Gen. 3:19). So creation out of the dust was reversed with the return to the dust. Here, however, the word for “dust” is stronger; the text (דַּכָּא) signifies the state of one crushed, and not merely returning to dust (עָפָר).

The second colon explains this action with the recording of a divine decree. It begins with the verb “you said” (וַתֹּאמֶר), which could be translated as an English present tense if it was interpreted to be a general reference to God’s control over the extent of life. But it is probably better to take the form as a past tense (the preterite with the waw consecutive), for that would show that this act is subsequent to the first colon of the verse. The decree says, “Return (שׁוּבוּ), you mortals (בְנֵי־אָדָם).” The decree is difficult and so open to various suggestions. Some commentators have chosen to give the decree a positive twist, making it either a call to repentance, or a call for a new generation to arise to life (the poetry in these cases would be antithetical parallelism). Anderson rejects these kinds of interpretations as unlikely, and takes the more natural interpretation that it is another reference to Genesis 3:19 and the divine decree that human beings will return to the dust. In this case the lines would form a more synonymous parallelism. People may not think of the brevity of life when all is going well; but death comes quickly and they are quickly gone.

But for God the passing of time is different (v. 4). To him a thousand years is nothing. Two similes are used to attempt to explain this. The first is that to God a thousand years is like “a day formerly (yesterday) when it passes.” It passes so quickly it is over before it is realized—to someone who is eternal it is nothing. The second simile compares a thousand years to a watch in the night. A watch is not the whole night; it lasts four hours. It may seem to go on and on, but is soon over (2 Pet. 3:8). If people lived to be a thousand, in God’s sight it would be as a day, or less, a few hours. In the eternal plan, human life is so brief that it is almost insignificant.

And so in verse 5 we read, “You [God] sweep them away (זְרַמְתָּם), they are as a sleep.” The verb suggests that people are so frail that they are easily swept away, as with a downpour, or with a flood (as the verb might indicate). But the verb is figurative for death in general: “You sweep them away, they are as a sleep.” The relationship between the two clauses is not clearly stated, and so several suggested reconstructions of the line have been presented, some of which seem a little far-fetched. The idea seems to be that as soon as God sweeps people away, i.e., when they leave this life, they become sleep. “Sleep” is often figurative in the Bible for death (and so an implied comparison is in use here; see Dan. 12:2; Ps. 17:15 perhaps; Luke 8:52; John 11:11–14; Acts 7:60, and 1 Cor. 15:51). The point is that they pass over into the sleep of death—they become death.

The rest of this verse and the next are problematic. In verse 5a we read that God sweeps people away into death, but in 5b we read that in the morning they are like grass that springs forth. The second half of the verse begins an illustrative restatement of the point. People are like the new grass that springs forth (passes on) in the morning, that is, in the beginning vigor of their lives they develop like the new grass. However, according to verse 6, even though they flourish in the morning, by the evening they are cut down and withered. The expressions “morning” and “evening” are figurative of the beginning and ending of life (implied comparisons). The verb translated “cut down” (יְמוֹלֵל) is difficult. It may be from מוּל, “cut off, or cut to pieces (cf. Ps. 118), or from מָלַל, “fade, wither.” If the first is correct, in the figure the fresh grass would be cut down by the scythe, or by the scorching sun. If the second is the verb, it would simply mean that people fade away. The point of the extended simile is that humans may flourish for a time, a brief time, but in the end their life is ended and they wither away.

C. God brings human life to an end because of his anger over sin (7–10)

In the next few verses the psalmist acknowledges the reason for the terrifying affliction and brevity of life—God’s anger over sin. In general, the background of this material is the record of the fall in Genesis 3. The Bible makes it clear that sin is the cause of all suffering and death, one way or another. But this psalm seems to speak of exceptional sin, severe wrath, and total devastation of the nation; this is the level of intensity that may be found in the wilderness wandering rebellions, or even the later captivity for that matter, but it is not the normal pattern in life. This is why it is a communal lament—they want relief from God’s anger so that what is left of their lives can be different. So verses 7–8 focus on God’s terrifying anger for sin; and verses 9–10 on the brevity of life. Verse 7 begins with a summary statement: “We are consumed by your anger, and terrified by your indignation.” The two verbs describe sinful humanity: “we are consumed” (כָלִינוּ) and “we are terrified” (נִבְהָלְנוּ; s.v. Ps. 83:15). The full force of God’s anger terrifies people (cf. Ps. 6:1), and eventually consumes them. As Anderson says, unless God takes pity on sinful people, life is an unrelieved sequence of toil and trouble. The context will next clarify that it is anger for sin that brings this about. The sins of the people cannot be hidden; God has clearly displayed them: “You have set our iniquities (עֲוֹנֹתֵינוּ; s.v. Ps. 32:5) before you, our secret sins (עֲלֻמֵנוּ) in the light of your face.” Nothing is concealed in darkness or secrecy; even our most secret sins are known openly and fully by God.

And according to verse 9, all our days pass away under God’s wrath, and we finish (כִּלִּינוּ) our years with a sigh (הֶגֶה; s.v. Ps. 2:1). The days pass quickly (the verb פָּנוּ meaning they turn away, decline), and soon they are years that we finish one by one, until life finally comes to an end. We experience how quickly life slips away; and the brevity of life reminds us of the divine death sentence for sin, which is both a curse and a blessing (that a cursed life will end). This psalm reminds us that as we live out this fragile and fleeting time on earth God is daily confronted by our sins. What we need, of course, is forgiveness for the sins and divine compassion for a longer and better life. But in this passage the focus is entirely on the sequence of sin, wrath, and judgment.

Just how long, then, do people have before life slips away? Verse 10 says that the normal life expectancy is seventy years, or eighty if by extraordinary strength (the plural גְּבוּרֹת being intensive; s.v. Ps. 45:3 for the word). This number fits the Israelite experience in the wilderness as Moses would be focusing on the general lifetime of the people. The adult population was condemned to wander for forty more years until they had passed off the scene, and the younger generation replaced them. As for Moses himself, he was extraordinary in that he lived much longer, which is why it is noted in Scripture.

So given this life expectancy, the psalmist then explains what those years are like: “yet their span is but trouble and sorrow.” The form in the Hebrew Bible (וְרָהְבָּם) is “and their pride”; it would mean the pride of their years—all that they can boast of for those years. The variant reading (וְרָחְבָּם) is “their width,” often rendered “their span.” It would mean what all those years include. This is the proposed reading based on the versions. Although the meaning would be essentially the same with either word, the first word, “their pride,” should not be quickly cast aside; it would say that even the best years they could boast were filled with trouble (עָמָל) and sorrow (אָוֶן; s.v. Ps. 28:3). But this troubled life is at least brief, for the time passes quickly (the participle גָז [from גּוּז] meaning “to pass along, disappear,” with the adverb חִישׁ, “quickly”) and then we fly away (וַנָּעֻפָה). The implied comparison of death with flying away captures the idea of the fleeting life and the finality of death.

The detailed emphasis on sin, wrath and judgment in this psalm most likely arose out of a specific setting such as the wandering in the wilderness that was a time characterized by sorrow and unending deaths. But since the writer has not specified the occasion, it serves as a prayer that would be useful at any time of adversity when sorrow and death point so clearly to human sinfulness. The psalm is a reminder of God’s rightful indignation over sins, that all are sinners and deserve divine wrath. But when the collective sinfulness of the people is the focus, then the emphasis on wrath and judgment is compelling.

II. In view of the incomprehensible power of God’s anger, people need God’s instruction to use their time wisely (11–12)

A. People have to know the relationship between God’s anger and the fear of God (11)

Verse 11 provides a transition to the petition section. It uses a rhetorical question (מִי־יוֹדֵעַ; for the verb, s.v. Ps. 67:2) to assert that no one knows the power of God’s wrath. And this wrath is related to the fear that is due God (literally, “according to the fear of/due you is your wrath”). If more fear is due then more wrath comes, because it comes on disobedience that is evidence of a lack of fear of God. Anderson explains the verse to say, “(Who considers) according to his reverence for God, the (reasons) for divine wrath?” In other words, people seldom connect sin and mortality, and so they keep sinning. But they should understand God’s wrath as those who truly fear him do. VanGemeren observes that God’s wrath is often ignored or explained away in times of trouble because the focus is usually on the suffering; but this prayer calls for a proper response to it all—we do not know the power of God’s wrath, so God should enable us to know wisdom.54

B. People can only pray for God to show them how to live their lives wisely (12)

When devout people measure God’s anger for sin against their reverence (or lack of reverence) for God, they understand the reason for the anger. They also realize this is beyond their knowledge, for they have been ignorant of God’s ways and unaware of their own sins. And so they must pray for divine instruction: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (v. 12). Because people do not know the full power of God’s wrath, they need to know how to live a life pleasing to God. And since wisdom begins with divine revelation, the appeal is for God to teach them (הוֹדַע, literally, “cause [us] to know”). How would God cause them to know? Certainly it would be through his word, but the communication of the truth of the word often came through priests and prophets who were charged with teaching Israel God’s laws (e.g., the Levites according to Deut. 33:9–10). The object of this teaching is “to number (לִמְנוֹת) our days” (which is put first in the line for emphatic positioning). The word “days” means the events or activities on the days (so a metonymy of subject). And the infinitive “to number” means more than simply counting days; it includes planning, carrying out, and evaluating those activities in that period of time—70 or 80 years. By teaching them to number their days, God would be making them realize how short, how fleeting, life actually is, and how important it is to plan out how to use that time.

And the result of this teaching would be the gaining of a heart of wisdom. The verb rendered “gain” is literally “that we may bring in” (וְנָבִא The word “wisdom” (חָכְמָה; s.v. Ps. 19:7) has the sense of “skill”; in wisdom literature it describes a life that is disciplined, devout, and productive. People who live their lives with moral and ethical skill produce things that are honoring to God and beneficial to the community. A heart (s.v. Ps. 111:1) characterized by wisdom signifies a person who has the right affections and makes the proper choices—it is a life of faith. Anderson suggests that the colon may be understood to mean “that we may bring wisdom into our heart”. The prayer, then, is that in view of the brevity of life, people need to learn how to use what God has given them to live a righteous and productive life. This is the essence of wisdom that is from above, a wisdom that will enable sinful people to live above the effects of the curse and produce a life that is pleasing to God. On the other hand, the wisdom of the world cannot please God.

III. In view of this transitory and troubled life, people also need God’s compassion to give them a joyful and productive life (13–17)

A. They can only pray for God to turn and have compassion on them (13)

Now the psalmist prays for God to “return” or “turn back” from his course of judging his people in anger over their sins. The intensity of his prayer is developed in verses 13 and 14 with three imperatives followed by cohortatives: turn back, have compassion, satisfy us … that we may sing. The initial petition for God to “turn back” (שׁוּבָה) is a prayer for God’s favor. The word was used earlier in the psalm for God’s turning people back into dust in his anger; now it is used for God to turn back from that way (for a similar turn in meanings, see Jon. 3). The second half of the colon uses a familiar rhetorical question to stress the urgency of the appeal: “How long?”—“Turn back, O LORD; how long …?” It expresses the lament that this affliction has been going on far too long. They want to know when the anger will cease.

How God should change or relent from this course of action is expressed by the second colon of the verse, an appeal for God to have compassion (וְהִנָּחֵם; s.v. Ps. 119:76) on his servants. This verb (נָחַם) in this (niphal) system, followed by the preposition “on” (עַל), usually means “to change one’s mind.” In another verbal system (piel) it means “to comfort.” The meanings overlap somewhat; here the only way that God will turn from righteous judgment will be by a favorable compassion towards the people. And in this passage that change will be shown to people who although sinners are his servants—believers who are trying to please him.

B. They may pray that God would give them as much joy as they have had sadness (14–15)

The next imperative actually expresses the desire for what would be the effect of these two appeals: “satisfy us (שַׂבְּעֵנוּ) in the morning with your loyal love.” If God turns in compassion from his wrath, then the people would be satisfied with his covenant love (חֶסֶד; s.v. Ps. 23:6). To satisfy them would be to fill them up with the benefits of his love (love being a metonymy of cause here) so that they lacked nothing. The prayer is for this to be “in the morning” (at dawn). The literal meaning could certainly be intended by the psalmist; but the expression is probably figurative, comparing a new beginning in God’s compassion and love with the dawning of a new day. And the outcome of this satisfaction will be joyful singing (וּנְרַנְּנָה; s.v. Ps. 33:1) and gladness (וְנִשְׂמְחָה; s.v. Ps. 48:11), not just for a moment, but for all of their days. Here would be one tangible result to the request to learn how to make their days count for God.

So the prayer is ultimately that God will make them glad, not just for a little while, but for as many days as he afflicted them (v. 15). In a sense God would be numbering the days they were “afflicted” (< עִנָּה), and the years that they saw “trouble” (רָעָה; s.v. Ps. 10:15) so that now he would grant them just as much time in his favor so that their lives would be filled with gladness and not lamentation.

C. They also pray that God not only display his work but also establish the work they do (16–17)

To these people it would not be sufficient for them simply to find relief from the sorrow and trouble of a life lived under the anger of God. No. They want a display of this divine work; and the work of God they want to see is his deliverance of them from affliction and death. They want something dramatic, something of God’s splendor (הָדָר; s.v. Ps. 96:6) to be revealed to them and to their children. They have endured years of suffering for sin; they are ready for years of divine blessing. But they want that blessing to be poured out in such a way that all will know that it is a marvelous work of God.

Not only do they want to see his work, but they also want their own work to be established. This petition begins with the appeal that the beauty of God (“our God,” recalling verse 1) be on them. This appeal for God’s “beauty” or “pleasantness” (נֹעַם) is an appeal to be identified with God’s favor (see Ps. 27:4). If God takes pleasure in them, they will flourish. So the effect of this favor is expressed in the last twofold appeal: “establish (כּוֹנְנֵהוּ; s.v. Ps. 93:1) the work of our hands.” It is an appeal to God to enable them to have a productive life, a life that has value.

Here then is the crowning contrast of the psalm: those who were described as weak and perishing (vv. 3–12) are now anticipating divine favor and blessing to live a joyful and productive life. Here is the dramatic reversal, for to live in the pleasure of God means that their labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

God’s deeds of deliverance will endure as long as people call to him for compassion; and with his blessing the work of their hands will also be established.

Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms (90–150): Commentary, vol. 3, Kregel Exegetical Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2016), 28–40.